


The Rest is Confetti

by eliizabethyork



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Accident and Injury, Amanda and Daniel are happily divorced, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Healing, M/M, More tags to be added, Recovery, Slow Burn AF, These boys are dumb and sad and have a long road to go but they will get there, Upcoming Carmen/Amanda, Very Bittersweet BUT WITH A HAPPY ENDING DAMMIT
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28855527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliizabethyork/pseuds/eliizabethyork
Summary: A car accident changes everything for Johnny and Daniel.set post season 3.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 24
Kudos: 83





	1. time was like a line

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Oooookay! Hiya folks. This is my first foray into the Cobra Kai world and for some reason I decided to go for an angst ridden mess. We are set about a year in the future from the end of season 3. BUT it has a happy ending, we just have steps to get there. Remember to have tissues ready for this.  
> PS. I live in NY and I am not familiar with California at all so some of the places here are made up, lol.

.

.

The phone woke her from her first good night’s sleep since her divorce. 

Amanda reached for it blindly, her hand slapping it off the nightstand and effectively silencing the ringer. But it’s screen was facing upward and it brightened once again a few minutes later, lighting up the inside of Amanda’s eyelids. Groaning, she reached for it again and nearly fell off the bed in her attempt. 

“Fucking thing....who is this?” 

_“Is this Amanda Larusso?”_ came a voice she did not recognize, from a number she did not recognize. 

Sitting up slowly and feeling more awake, Amanda whispered, “Yes it is. Who’s calling?” 

_“Mrs. Larusso, this is Nurse Dawn Benson at Cedar Sinai. Your daughter and a friend of hers were brought into the ER about an hour ago --”_

Now fully awake and already throwing her covers off, Amanda nearly tripped over her slippers. “What? What do you mean? Samantha is at a retreat with her class --?” Panic starts to claw at her chest. “ - is she -” 

The nurse’s voice is steady and calm, and surprisingly, it helps Amanda feel a bit calmer too. _“She’s in surgery right now. Apparently she and her friend_ -” Amanda can hear the shuffling of papers on the other end. “ - uh Robby Keene -” _Oh god._ “ - _were coming around a corner by Encino Park and because it’s been so unseasonably cold_ , they hit black ice and lost control, causing the car to overturn and roll -” Nausea rolls in Amanda’s stomach, her shoes hanging limply from her fingers as she listens. “ - S _amantha sustained severe trauma to her right arm in the impact and her axillary artery was nicked from broken glass. The paramedics were able to sustain the bleeding in the ambulance and the surgeons are currently working on her arm right now. She also has three broken ribs, a concussion, and several bruises and lacerations_.” 

Dawn doesn’t make a sound when Amanda asks her to wait a moment as she throws up what’s in her stomach into the bathroom sink. 

When she gets back on the line, wiping her mouth on a damp towel that Anthony had tossed in the hamper (what was he doing in her bathroom?) this morning, Dawn asks her, “ _You and your husband are also listed as Robby Keene’s emergency contacts. Does he have parents or -?_ ” 

Her voice trembles as she tries to find the words. It takes a second for her to realize she has an iron grip on the edge of the sink, her knuckles have eased into the same color as the porcelain. “I - I don’t know his mom’s number but his dad’s number is -” she rattles off the phone number with ease, having memorized it ages ago when she knew this dumb karate war wasn’t going to end and there were going to be times that Johnny Lawrence was going to have to bail her idiotic (but still wonderful) ex husband out of trouble, and vice versa. 

“ - h-how...how is Robby?” The slight clearing of the throat she hears from Dawn tells her everything. “ - tell me, is h-he -” 

“ _He’s alive,_ ” There’s another rustle of papers. “ _Robby sustained serious head trauma, swelling around the brain. He is in surgery at the moment. The paramedics found them out of their belts, and they also found a swiss army knife in the car. Apparently Mr. Keene cut them both from their seatbelts --”_

The knife. Johnny had given Robby that knife last year, when he had still been in the clutches of John Kreese and Terry Silver. 

_“...which is good actually because -”_

Amanda stopped listening. 

-;

The drive over to Daniel’s house results in her having to pull over three times to do that breathing that Daniel and Sam had insisted on teaching her. In truth, it had come in handy several times down at the dealership when she was dealing with people that came in with their own brand of stupid, as well as other dealership owners that were so insistant on buying them out. They often helped whenever Anthony would give her attitude as well. All part of being a mother, she supposed. She never told Daniel this, his smug smirk would make her want to pinch him in his chicken arm. 

Anthony was still asleep. She had left a note on his bedside table, the kid being dead to the world when she tiptoed in after her neighbor, kind, old Mrs. Brunswick who was watching television, had agreed to come over and stay with Anthony. All she had put into the note was that Sam was hurt and she had to go to her at the hospital and she would be back early in the morning. 

It was early in the morning, Amanda realized as she looked at the digital numbers on the clock in her car. 12:02 am. A new day, which was going to begin a hellish new reality. 

Daniel’s house is up on a slight hill off of the main boulevard. After their divorce, (with the urging of the kids) they both agreed it would be best to just sell the house and each find new places to live. Amanda had chosen a large two bedroom apartment that was about three miles away from the dealership and a block away from Anthony’s school, which was an added bonus. Anthony had immediately asked to go with her and Sam had wanted to stay with Daniel - which in truth wasn’t a huge surprise to either one of them. So Daniel had found a nice house that was a ten minute drive, thirty minute walk, away from her apartment building. It had a large backyard for him to turn into a garden and a place for the dojo to meet twice a week. Two bedrooms and a large Spanish style kitchen that was big enough for the weekly surge of teenagers to gather in like a horde of locusts once the karate classes were over. 

All the lights are off and the house is completely darkened when Amanda pulls up into the driveway. Getting out on shaky legs, Amanda types the security code into the box by the door and it opens without a sound. The room is pitch black and Amanda paws at the wall to find the light switch, to which she has to blink a few times to adjust too once the room fills with balmy artificial haze. 

Her ex-husband is deeply asleep when she gently pushes open his bedroom door and he doesn’t wake up when she lightly touches his shoulder. Another shake and he nearly headbutts her in the chin as he flies up into a sitting position. “Amanda, what the _fuck -”_

She easily dodges getting her chin cracked, already stepping backwards to grab for Daniel’s sneakers on the floor. “Get up,” one sneaker lands on the bed. “I just got a phone call from the hospital. Robby and S-Sam -” The other sneaker follows. “They were in a car accident.” When she looks back, Daniel’s holding the sneakers in his lap and looking at her rather dumbly, the information having not sunken in yet. So she leaves the bedroom and heads back out to the car, Daniel’s thundering footsteps just a second behind hers. 

When they get to the car, they both freeze at their respective sides, staring at each other over the hood for not even a moment. With that blink of time, so much is exchanged between the two of them. Daniel may not be her husband anymore, but he is still her partner in almost ever sense of the word and -- _and --_

It’s not just one of their children hurting. Sometime along the line, their little brood had grown from two to three. Robby was their boy in every instance except blood, and that didn’t even matter to them. But Johnny and Shannon - _god._

Amanda couldn’t even let that thought enter her mind. 

-;

Dawn is waiting at the reception area. 

Even without a description, Amanda knows it’s her. A rather short woman with wide shoulders, and a round face that held that _no nonsense_ glare, that easily faded into kindness and compassion without missing a beat. “Amanda and Daniel Larusso?” Dark brown hair braided back into a tight bun and bright green eyes gazed back at Amanda’s blues and she nodded. “Come with me, honey.” 

They’re led down a short hallway into a private room and Amanda immediately thinks the worst. Daniel’s hand tightens around hers and she can see the slight tremble to his shoulders out of the corner of her eye. “What’s going on? How are our kids? Are they --” The words won’t form. She won’t let them. 

A slight look of shock crosses Dawn’s face, followed by a shine of guilt. “Oh goodness me, no. The doctor is coming out to give you two an update, and since it’s the middle of the night and the two am rush is going to be arriving soon, I thought you’d be more comfortable here.” Amanda sucks in a breath, practically collapsing in one of the hard plastic chairs that rests against the wall, Daniel’s hand still gripped in hers. 

An hour passes by before a man in blue scrubs arrives. “Mr. and Mrs. Larusso? I’m Dr. Adelman. I’m currently operating on your daughter, Samantha.” The doctor is tall with a ring of ginger hair that stretches from ear to ear. He pulls up one of those plastic chairs in front of them and perches on the edge of it, knees bent and ready to spring back into action. Words flow over the doctor’s tongue, many quite foreign to her as he explains the extent of Samantha’s injuries. Dawn had explained them better over the phone, but apparently there was more. More that had been found once their daughter had gone under Adelman’s knife. 

_It is a miracle that it wasn’t worse._

Worse, huh? What could be worse then right here and now? 

“What about Robby?” Daniel suddenly asks. A confused look crosses Adelman’s face. “He was in the car with our daughter. The nurse - Dawn said that he had head trauma.” 

Adelman’s expression doesn’t change, but he does promise to send someone to find out information for them on Robby’s whereabouts and _maybe someone should contact his parents_ and oh god why haven’t they been called yet? 

The doctor leaves them with another promise that their baby girl was going to be fine and would be in surgery just another hour, with time in recovery. Amanda’s blood roars in her ears, the sound of the door closing muted and hazed like she was underwater. 

And then she slips out of her chair and right onto the hard linoleum floor. Daniel kneels beside her, his voice shaking as he tells her to breathe, _just breathe,_ and he’s trying to do the same. Amanda thinks of Anthony, her sweet son, at home and sleeping away without a care in the world and without knowledge that his perfect world was about to be torn to shreds. Oh, god would she have to do that? (Anthony _worshipped_ Robby. And he and Sam had been growing closer and closer since the divorce.) Would she have to rip her son’s heart out not once, but _twice?_

As her heart rate returns to normal and she can actually hear the world around her, Daniel’s voice is back at her ear, telling her that he has to go find Johnny and _here, take Shannon’s number down,_ and Amanda knows she should be angry he’s going to leave her there, but no one should have to hear from a stranger on the phone that their son is possibly dying. 

Not like they just did. 

So she calls the number for Shannon Keene, still seated on the uncomfortable floor, all alone in that room. It rings and rings and rings for almost an hour and Amanda hangs up each time when she hears a cheery voice warble out into her ear, _“Hi this is Shannon Keene, I’m not in right now --”_ Click. 

_Hi, this is Shannon Keene, I’m not in --_

Click. 

_Hi this is Shannon Keene, I’m -_

Click. 

_Hi, this is Shannon Keene -_

Click. 

_Hi, this is Shannon -_

Click. 

_Hi, this is -_

Click. 

_Hi -_

Click. 

-;

His knuckles are bleeding. 

Daniel stares at his hand, raised to knock on the door of Johnny Lawrence’s apartment, and wonders when that happened. The blood looked fresh too, trickling down his fingers and sliding over his nails. He couldn’t understand - 

“Larusso?” 

The door had opened and he barely even noticed until that familiar blond man that he couldn’t shake loose from his life was standing there. “I -?” 

Johnny was staring at him like he had gone insane, and Daniel was pretty sure he had. “What the fuck are you doing here, man? It’s nearly one in the morning.” 

His eyes darted over Johnny, noting the sweats and the long sleeved flannel he wore, and the blindingly white socks on his feet. He vaguely remembers a moment of a lifetime ago where Robby had told him he had dragged his father out clothes shopping and feeling rather like the parent in the situation. Miguel had come along too, and apparently it had been quite an escapade. Daniel hadn’t been able to stay and listen to the whole story, something had called him away. Oh, how he wished he had now. 

A swallow bobbled his throat. “There’s been an accident.” The confusion and the barely formed annoyance on Johnny’s face immediately fades. “Sam and Robby…” 

The door closes for a moment and Daniel is left out there on the stoop. One heartbeat later and it opens again, and Johnny walks out and past him, sneakers on his feet and his shoulders drawn tight as stone and granite. “Take me to him.” 

-;

Shannon Keene calls her back at 1:23.

Terror clips over the words as they come out of Amanda’s mouth, and for one horrible moment, she _wonders…_

“They won’t tell me anything except what I just told you -” 

_Head trauma._

_Swelling on the brain._

_We really need his parents here._

Amanda hated everything. “ - please get here, Shannon.” 

-;

“They’re out of surgery.” 

Those are the first words that come out of Amanda’s mouth when she greets them in the lobby of the ER. No hello, just a beckon for them to follow her back to that tiny, private room where they were greeted by not one, not two, but _five_ people. One that Amanda immediately recognizes with a dawning horror. 

Not even a minute later, a wobbly Shannon Keene is at the door and they tell her to wait for just a moment and Johnny is being taken out of that room and led away with his ex-wife, two doctors, a nurse, and - 

“Samantha’s surgery was successful. We have placed three pins in her arm, and successfully stopped the bleeding in the axillary artery. We had to do an exploratory, there were many entrance wounds from the the glass of the shattered windshield -” 

The kids had rolled _three_ times before the car had finally come to a standstill upside down. Sam didn’t just have a piece of glass embedded in her arm, the surgeons had removed dozens of pieces from her skin, muscle, and had to go searching along the veins and arteries to find more tiny fragments that had wriggled away. 

“- there is significant nerve damage to her upper arm. We are not sure yet but another surgery may be required in the near future to further repair the nerves.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Daniel asked.

Sam wouldn’t have full use of her arm. Adelman said something about _ninety percent usage_ and _physical therapy_ , the words blurring back together and apart as Amanda struggled to process them. Her daughter would be in pain for the rest of her life. 

But she was alive. 

-;

“...that woman that left with Johnny and Shannon? You recognized her, didn’t you?”

They were still waiting in that awful room. They are still waiting because Sam is not yet out of recovery and she has to be brought to the ICU and settled before they can see her. And that’s all Amanda wants, that’s all she asks for every time someone sticks their head in that doorway and asks if they need anything.

_My baby. I need my baby._

Amanda looks up from her perch on the floor to where Daniel sits. 

If this day didn’t suck so much already, she'd be laughing at what looked back at her. Daniel had built a fort out of the plastic chairs, each one precariously stacked one on top of the other. He sat underneath them and was looking upward, almost like he expected the teetering chairs to come crashing down upon him and they would be welcomed as they did. 

Instead, her gaze flickers back to her sock covered feet. One of her shoes was across the room, the other discarded a few feet away. “Her name is Rachel. I met her last year at the office Christmas party. She was with Brian from accounting.”

“Okay...I don’t think that look you had on your face would cover just a simple office party recognition though.”

Amanda hesitated. She didn’t want to say it. If she said it then it would be more real then it is now. “She’s a transplant coordinator.”

“‘Transplant coordinator…’” Daniel repeated. And then his eyes widened. “An _organ_ transplant coordinator?!” At Amanda’s stiff nod, Daniel cursed in Italian and then got to his feet. “Fuck this, I’m going to go out and find some goddamn information and -“

At that moment the door opened. A new nurse was standing there, one with bright blond hair that had streaks of pink through her ponytail. “Mr. and Mrs. Larusso? I’m here to take you to see your daughter.” 

So much faded away in that beat. Amanda, feeling like she was on wheels as she and Daniel trailed behind the nurse, Julia, feels her feet not quite moving beneath her as she prepares for what is to come. 

.

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a/n: Follow me on [tumblr. ](https://auroraperriineau.tumblr.com/)


	2. moments laid out like dominoes

.

.

Daniel’s pretty sure he’s going to be sick. 

One of the worst moments of his life had been that late morning when the school had called to tell him that Sam had gotten into a fight. Not just a fight, an all out battle that had landed her in the hospital with three deep gashes in her arm and a mild concussion. And her friends…

Seeing Johnny on that elevator had been a sobering experience. When Amanda had told him that they had to stop this shit, he had agreed because - well their baby had gotten hurt. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to protect her and keep her and Anthony safe. And that harsh reality was - his own actions had put her there in that hospital. 

Standing there next to Johnny, there had been nothing more that he had wanted to do then just hit the stop button and rage at him and let him rage back. To finally get this all out and done and over with because these were their _kids._

But he had been a coward. 

As Julia led them to the intensive care unit, he felt that familiar fear rise up in stomach and into his throat. If Amanda hadn’t had his hand in an iron grip, he knows he would have fallen right to the floor in a heap. 

The bed is large, larger than any hospital bed he has ever seen. Or maybe it’s just that his daughter looks so incredibly small, framed by large, pristine white pillows and many tubes and wires that all seemed to be connected to the machines that flanked her bed. His stomach rolled when he saw the bag of blood hanging up. An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth and when Julia saw him staring at it, she said, “Standard procedure for accident victims. We will be switching her over to a nasal cannula later on.” Julia continued to go over Sam’s vitals and statistics and Daniel tried to listen, he really did, until his gaze found the soft cast that covered Sam’s right arm from bicep to her fingertips and then he really did slip to the floor. 

When his vision came back into focus, Daniel realized he was sitting in a hard plastic chair, a bottle of water in his hand as Julia’s gentle hand pushed on the back of his neck, making his head lower down between his knees. “Follow my breathing, Mr. LaRusso,” she said and he knew this already. He was familiar with panic attacks. They had become a thing when Terry Silver showed up in his dojo in the middle of the night. 

_In through the nose, and out through the mouth._

_In through the nose, and out through the mouth._

A garbage can is shoved between his knees. When he finally looks up, Julia has gone with the promise to return in two hours, _hit the call button if you need anything,_ and Amanda stands on their daughter’s left side. Her undamaged side. “Are you all right?” 

Shame floods through Daniel and he nods. “I’m sorry.” 

The look that Amanda gives him is forgiving, but also firm. Daniel vows to never let what just happened happen again. 

-;

“How long until she wakes up?” 

Sabine, the new nurse, looks at her watch. “The sedative she was given usually takes about three hours to wear off, so another hour probably. Expect her to be very uncomfortable.” She leaves then without another word and Daniel watches her go, continuing to stare at the doorway long after she had gone. 

Amanda looks up from her spot at Sam’s left. Her phone rests in her lap, legs crossed underneath her on the uncomfortable plastic chair, having just gotten off the phone with Mrs. Brunswick to give her an update. _“Don’t tell Anthony anything, please.”_ Sam hadn’t moved once, the only movement being the steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in and out, her breaths muted by the fuzzy spray of the oxygen mask that still covered her nose and mouth. With a tired sigh, Amanda stretched her legs out in front of her and got to her feet, tossing her phone into Daniel’s lap. “I’m going to take a walk down the hall and then I’m going to see if I can find out some information about Robby. I’ll be right back.” 

Daniel nodded and took her seat, not looking up as she left the room. Amanda wasn’t too sure where she was going as she walked down that long corridor. Nurses and orderlies passed by her on each side, the lights in the ceiling muted and dimmed. Right at the very end of the hallway was a large set of bay windows, an uncomfortable set of cushions stretched across the window seat. The city lights shined through the tempered glass, reflecting the craze of life outside, even at this ungodly hour. 

As Amanda reached the very end, she could see a blue Mustang parked outside on the curb. There was a room to her right, and a doorway to the stairs to her left. A nurse and a doctor both came in and out of that room and to her alarm, Amanda recognized the doctor as the one that had taken Johnny and Shannon away from the awful room downstairs. Her heart started to hammer in her chest, every cell in her body screaming _he’s in there!_ She looked at the frosted glass on the door and tiptoed a little closer, trying to calm the panicked rabbit quick pulse of her heart with a few breaths. 

The voices from inside the room were quiet and neither one of the ones speaking were Johnny or Shannon. 

_“Mr. Lawrence, Ms. Keene -”_

_“You have some decisions you need to make -”_

_“How about you go fuck yourself, doc?”_

Amanda bit her lip to swallow back a gasp of shock and she nearly fell on her ass leaping backwards to avoid getting hit by the swinging door that revealed the doctor - they had said his name downstairs - _Kent? Troy?_ \- “Ma’am, what are you doing here?” 

She heard Johnny’s voice as she attempted to find an excuse, a reason -- _“_ She can come in.” 

The doctor steps back to allow her access. Amanda’s knees wobble and she ends up gripping the back of the chair that Shannon occupies, her eyes frozen on the bed. Her horror at the sight of Sam is practically eradicated from her head and she is pretty sure she’s going to fall over. 

Surprisingly, Shannon’s hand comes around and wraps around her wrist and the feeling stops. The doctor is gone and the nurse follows after returning Robby’s chart to the door, letting it fall closed after her. And they’re alone. 

There was a tube down Robby’s throat. The machines next to him breathed artificial life into his body and each rise and fall of his chest was delayed. There was no steady rhythm that showed that true breath of life, nothing that rang out saying _alive, alive, alive._

She thinks of Rachel, of the first (and only) time she had met her and how a shiver had gone up her spine when the woman had told her of her job. 

_(“I cannot imagine doing that kind of job.”_

_“It’s rough. But in the end, despite the loss and the tragedy -_

_The person that has died has saved several more lives.”_

_“In the end, in a way, it was worth it.”)_

Amanda didn’t believe that. Not for one solitary breath. 

“The swelling was too much,” Shannon was saying. Amanda twisted her wrist so her fingers closed around Shannon’s instead. The other woman held on with vice like strength. “He has...maybe until the morning.” 

Johnny flinched, but said nothing. His own large scarred hands are wrapped around Robby’s much smaller ones, and he still says nothing when Shannon gives in to her tears. They come hot and boiling, and a few are shaken loose from Amanda too, but she keeps them quiet. This isn’t about her pain. 

She gets to keep her child. 

-;

_“Daniel...you better come.”_

Amanda whispers to him what he is about to see, but that is not enough to prepare him. Nothing ever will be. 

Robby’s face is swollen, bruises littering his jaw and forehead. The wound that took his life away is covered with a clean bandage that is almost blindingly white, and he blames that for the fact that he has to look anywhere but there. 

His gaze falls on Johnny Lawrence’s hunched back instead, the worn flannel stretched across his shoulders and down his arms, tense muscles that look like they are ready to break and shatter into dust. Daniel’s hands twitch at his sides, practically longing to reach out and touch those shoulders, to offer some sort of comfort that he has no right to give. 

Shannon’s voice is wobbly. “They want us to sign papers, to consent to donate his or-organs.” Tears streak her face, tripping off of her chin, but she doesn’t bother to wipe them away. “Rachel, the transplant c-coordinator said -” 

“ _Fuck_ what that woman said,” Johnny snaps. “Fuck what the doctor said. Robby is going to be fine. So stop, Shan, okay? Just stop.” 

Amanda reached out a hand and gently pulled Shannon from her seat. “Let’s take a walk, okay? Get some air?” 

Once they were gone, Daniel was suddenly aware of just how alone he was in this awful room. His own knees trembled a bit as he took Shannon’s vacated chair, eyes flickering to his watch. An expression of annoyance crossed Johnny’s face when he sees that. “Got someplace to be?” 

“Sam’s sedation is due to wear off in a little while,” Daniel responded without looking at the other man. “I don’t want her to wake up alone.” 

Johnny was quiet for a long time. “Daniel, you don’t have to stay.”

“I know.”

Time passes. How much, Daniel is not quite sure. Maybe he falls into a doze. Maybe he lands in another world where there is no pain and loss. 

“I’ve given up on him too many times.” Johnny’s voice is nearly inaudible, practically spoken into his chest and Daniel has to strain to hear him. “I’m not doing it again.” 

-;

Probably in the last hours of Mr. Miyagi’s life was the last time that Daniel felt this exhausted. 

Sam wakes up at 3:31 am and is instantly sobbing in pain. Sabine rushes in with a syringe and Daniel watches as the needle slides into Sam’s IV and she slips back off into a muted haze almost immediately. “What did you give her?” 

“Morphine,” Sabine disposes of the needle into a canister in the corner. “She will be allowed only a few doses over the next few days, we want to move her off of any kind of dependence rather quickly.” Daniel doubted anything like that would happen. After she had been slashed last year, it had been a battle to get Sam to take any kind of medication that was stronger than ibuprofen. But, Daniel’s eyes trace the soft cast over her right arm, that hadn’t been even close to what was happening now. 

Sabine left, and Daniel’s hand gripped Sam’s left one, pressing a kiss to her fingers. Sam’s eyes flickered open, her gaze heavy on him. “Hey, baby girl.” 

“Hey, dad.” The strain on her right arm was obvious as she lifted it, the pulse ox monitor still on her index finger. Her hand landed on her forehead, eyes widening when she felt the bandage at her brow. “What - what happened?” Fingers pushed at the bandage and she winced. “Oh, god --” Her hand pressed harder. “Oh, _god --”_

“Sam -” Daniel gently disentangled her fingers, wrapping them within his own hand. “Sam, breathe, okay? Just _breathe -_ “ He tries to breathe too, he really does. Sam mimics his movements, the nasal cannula giving her the extra oxygen that she needed. Daniel gently brushed her matted hair back from her forehead. “Atta girl, you got it.” 

Her eyes asked the question that Daniel did not want to answer. But he does. 

The tears come hot and fast down both of their faces once the words are spoken. Daniel swallowed his back, he couldn’t do this right now. He had to be strong, he had to be solid for his daughter. For Amanda and Anthony. He couldn’t fall apart and run away. 

“That can’t be,” his daughter sobbed, her good hand still holding his. “Daddy, _please.”_

Oh how he wished he had the powers to fix all of this. To go back in time and stop the crash, to stop all of this and to take away all the pain. The pain that his daughter and those poor, poor parents down the hall were going through. Pain that was about to get so much worse. 

Daniel held her until she slipped back off into a medicated doze, gently easing her injured shoulders back down onto the pillows. Amanda was at the door when he turned around and the look on her face told him everything. 

“Johnny and Shannon signed the consent forms.” Daniel’s heart sank. Amanda’s hand clutched the door frame so hard that her knuckles turned white. “They’re letting Robby go.” 

The world stops once again. 

-; 

“I want to see him.”

“Samantha -“

“No! No, Mom, I need to see Robby. _Please._ I need to say g-goodbye.”

Sabine brought in a wheelchair and the three of them eased Sam into it. Daniel’s heart ached at the sound of his daughter’s pained whimpers and he steeled himself for what was to come. Shannon had agreed to Sam coming in, Johnny hadn’t said a word. 

The descent down the hallway seems to be endless, but all again too quick. Daniel is reminded of the green mile and has to swallow down a sudden rise of bile in his throat. When they enter the room, Sam lets out a small sob at the sight of her friend and reached backwards for her mother. “It’s okay, baby.” Amanda grabbed her good hand with hers, giving it a soft squeeze. 

Sabine moved the wheelchair to the same side Daniel occupied in what was probably hours before. With a glance towards the window he could see that the sun was not up yet so he didn’t really know. Time didn’t have much meaning at the moment. Sam continues to softly cry, taking Robby’s right hand in her left. “This is all my fault. This is all my fault and I am so sorry.” 

Daniel bit his lip, swallowing back the words that threatened to come spilling out. His gaze flickered over to Johnny, who was standing slowly. His steps are stiff, disjointed, practically a shuffle as he walks over to the window and looks out. A knock comes at the door. The doctor is there. 

“We’re ready.” 

-;

Robby Keene dies at 6:12 am, just as the sun is coming up. 

She’s not his mother but Amanda feels the exact moment that the sweet boy’s soul leaves. It’s like a knife had carved out her guts and left a gaping hole behind. When she does, she holds her sleeping daughter even closer. 

Daniel watches the boy’s bed being wheeled down that hallway, to the elevator that will carry him to an operating room where he will give the greatest gift to several other people. His parents follow, and the doors close just as Johnny looks up, his hand still wrapped around his son’s smaller one. The doors shut and Daniel slides to the floor. 

The hallway eventually starts to thicken up with people, doctors and nurses and medics beginning their morning shifts. No one knew. No one cared that a beautiful boy, who deserved everything in the world was now gone. No one paid him any mind, curled up on the floor by his daughter’s room. These people were used to it, they were used to watching others slip away from this world and into whatever was waiting in the next. He had watched his dad die at the age of eight, and he didn’t understand then what was happening. Even as he grew older and began to recognize the absence that his father had left, he got lucky and it was filled by Mr. Miyagi. 

Losing Mr. Miyagi had been the worst. Days had passed after watching the old man go away before he could even take a breath. And if it wasn’t for his precious little girl, he doesn’t know if he would have again. 

“Daniel?” 

A pair of sensible shoes are suddenly in his eyeline. Suddenly, Carmen is there, her gentle face drawn with worry, hand on his elbow. What was she - oh, it was nearly seven in the morning. Miguel had mentioned once that she had managed to fix it to work seven to seven shifts for a few months. 

She peers at him, and he can tell she is assessing him for ailments. Something she can fix. Can she fix this unbearable, bottomless black that was going to swallow him whole? Could she fight the monsters of death? 

He tells her then. The words come spilling out of his mouth and there is no way of stopping them. Carmen’s own face falls when she registers the exhausted babble he is throwing at her and he feels a flush of guilt. After all the shit that he and Johnny and the others had put her and her son through, she doesn’t have to listen to this. To his grief for a child that is not even his own. But to his surprise, Carmen reaches over and grabs his hand and that’s when he realizes he’s starting to hyperventilate because he’s crying so hard. When did he start crying? Carmen squeezes his hand again and there’s a light going on in his exhausted brain, telling him to fucking _breathe._

_In through the nose, out through the mouth._

_-;_

_“Lucille LaRusso, you have better have a good excuse for calling me on Sunday morning.”_

In another life, Daniel would have laughed at his mother’s Jersey sarcasm. Another world. Instead his lip quivers and he feels eight years old again. “M-Mom?”

“ _Daniel? Sweetheart, what’s the matter?”_

Carmen had stuffed him into the nurses’ lounge- _You do not need to be falling apart right outside your daughter’s room -_ and she must have let her co-workers know to give him some time because no one else had come into the musty smelling room in the last thirty minutes. “Mom, something - something happened.” He rubbed his hand over his face and up into his hair, pulling rather roughly. “There was a car accident. Sam and Robby -” Shit, now he’s crying again. The tears come hot and fast, scalding his skin. “S-Sam got sick on their senior retreat and Robby was bringing her back early and - and - and -” His jaw trembles. “ - they hit black ice -” Lucille curses on the other end of the line. “ - Sam’s okay. I mean, her arm is fucked up pretty bad but -” 

_“That’s good, Daniel. Samantha is a fighter. She will be just fine,”_ His mother immediately assures him. “ _Breathe, baby. I need you to breathe.”_ He does. He knows the drill. He can do this. He _can -_

“Robby didn’t make it.” 

His mother’s silence tells him she already knew that was coming. “ _God. That poor boy.”_ She takes a deep shuddering breath. _“How are his parents?”_

A tear flickers down his cheek, coming to a rest on his chin. “Broken.” 

-;

Lucille LaRusso hangs up the phone first. She had plane tickets to buy, a bag to pack. Daniel had asked her to come home, and she was already offering before the words were out of his mouth. Anthony would need someone to keep after him since his parents were going to be focused on Sam for the next several weeks. She wondered how much Anthony knew right now or if he was still asleep in his bed, oblivious to the world of pain that was about to come his way. 

Robby. O _h, Robby._ Tears start to fall from Lucille’s eyes as she rushes to her room and grabs that expensive as hell luggage set her son had bought her when she moved back to New Jersey last year. She pays them no mind, carelessly wiping them away as she pushes clothes into the case and throws a pair of boots and a pair of sandals on top of the mess before zipping it up. That sweet, wonderful boy who had worked so hard to put his life back together. Who had driven the moving truck that she had rented from California back to New Jersey just a few months before and refused to let her pay him more than the gas money. 

As she reaches for her coat in the closet, her hand closes around soft, downy leather. A gasp leaves her lips and Lucille gently pulls the leather jacket from the hanger and lets it pool in her grasp. “Oh _Robby.”_

-;

April 12th, 2021. 

.

“I cannot believe you have never been to New Jersey before.” 

The young man laughed, popping a fry into his mouth. “Never made it past Las Vegas. The cops always picked me up before I got too far.” 

Lucille snorts. “How much of that story does your father know?” 

“Not too much,” Robby admits with another laugh. “But it’s not like he never got up to his own shit when he was my age.”

Those days were as clear as if they happened yesterday. Her boy coming home to complain, to vent about another stupid thing “ _That Johnny Lawrence -”_ had done that day. She had half wondered if -- Lucille waved the thought away, smiling at the boy across from her. There was so much of that blond teenager from another lifetime in this boy. Stubborn, a hothead (just like her own boy, just like her granddaughter), and a complete unwillingness to give up. 

When Robby had shown up outside her apartment with the large U-Haul that she had rented two days before, Lucille couldn’t help but laugh. “How about a roadtrip, Mrs. LaRusso?” he had asked her with a cheeky grin and she had affectionately pinched his cheek and told him to hop in. Maybe she could work some of her ‘grandma magic’ as Samantha had called it, on him during the two day drive that was ahead. 

“Listen, once you are through with your food, let’s go sight seeing. Maybe you can pick up some things to take back with you.” 

Robby had happily agreed and wolfed down the rest of his food. Lucille paid the bill and wrapped an arm around his shoulders as they exited the restaurant. “Don’t go too far, your father will have my head if I lose you in the middle of the city.” She ignored the way Robby flinched at her words and tightened her arm. 

The day that follows is wonderful. They end up seeing a movie, and stopping at a few shops. Robby picks up a gold necklace with a small medallion on the end of it and he doesn’t tell her who it’s for. He also buys a really beautiful peach scarf and Lucille knows that is for Amanda, who had gotten into the habit of wearing scarves for some odd reason. As they continue to stroll through the hustle and bustle of the city, he stops outside a thrift store that has a leather jacket in the window that reminds her a bit of Danny Zuko’s from Grease. 

The light is leaving the sky and they do need to be heading back, and Robby looks at her for a moment. “Go on, it’s okay.” Lucille follows him inside and the clerk is already pulling the jacket from it’s display in the window, passing it to Robby. With a hesitant breath, Robby eases the jacket on over his shoulders and his choked breath eases out. “It fits perfectly.” 

He beamed at her. “Yes it does.” 

Lucile thumbed at the few gaudy decorations on the pockets. “These can easily be removed. We can have it tailored to just the way you like it. This is real leather too.” Her fingers find the price tag and she winces, holding it up for Robby to see. A hundred and fifty dollars for a leather coat that was probably over ten years old but -- “What are you doing?” Robby’s carefully shucking the coat from his shoulders and handing it back to the clerk. 

“It’s okay, Lucille.I can’t afford that anyways,” Robby said softly. “Thank you for the thought though.” 

The look on the boy’s face tells her he won’t argue and Lucille lets him go, waiting until he’s out of earshot and waiting for her outside the shop before turning to the clerk. “Can you hold that for me?” 

“Of course.” 

“Just wait until we’re out of sight before you pull it out of the window. I will be back in the morning to buy it.” 

The clerk smiles. “I’d be happy too. Your grandson is a great kid, by the way.” 

Lucille doesn’t bother to correct him, warmth pooling in her chest. “Yeah. Yeah, he is.” 

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm SORRY. I know this is painful. We have a few more steps to go. 
> 
> Any mistakes are mine. Leave reviews and kudos please!

**Author's Note:**

> .
> 
> a/n: Wow, so yeah I know this looks very bleak right now. I don't expect much feedback, stories like this usually don't get it, but it was an idea that popped into my head and wouldn't go away. I would LOVE the feedback though, so if you wanna drop me a comment/kudos that would be freaking awesome, lol.


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